Juan Soto’s showboating makes him tough act to suffer as free agency frenzy heats up

Wake me when it’s over.

On second thought, don’t even bother.

From the moment the Yankees traded for free agent-in-waiting Juan Soto in early December of last year, media speculation began to run wild on where he might next play and for how much after his one season with the Yankees.

Perhaps because I could not suffer Soto’s style of play — he’s a superior batter but spends more time practicing his elaborate home run handshakes and is indiscriminately eager to demonstrate immodest home plate behavior than learning to play right field — I’ve found Soto a tough act to suffer back to when he was a showboat on feeble Nationals teams.

So, as Soto celebrated his batting accomplishments throughout this past season, I daily turned the page and the dial when this self-limited superstar was projected to sign with any of 15 or so teams. Soto, as Manny Machado explained for choosing not to run to first base, “is not my cup of tea.”

So the Mets are now the leading contenders to sign Soto for, who knows, perhaps nearly a billion bucks in Steve Cohen hedge fund and gambling casino speculation money. Great.

Chump change? Lest we forget in 2013 Cohen’s SAC firm paid a record $1.8 billion fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider — crooked — trading. There was, of course, the standard “no admission of wrongdoing” attached to the settlement. But if it that was ignored by fearless leader Rob Manfred, why should it shake our worlds?

Don’t forget, Fay Vincent was fired as MLB’s commissioner for having the gall to suspend George Steinbrenner for a conspicuous breach of ethics and integrity after Howard Spira was sentenced to the nut house wing of a federal penitentiary, having lured Steinbrenner to pay for alleged dirt on Dave Winfield.

Vincent had already seen Steinbrenner suspended for two felony convictions for trying to buy his way into the Nixon White House.

Manfred and before him Bud “Bottom Line” Selig would offer no such barriers to team owners as long as their buy-in checks cleared.

But as the national pastime is badly denuded by an absence of basic, winning fundamentals, integrity is no longer required, either. Heck, a nickel-and-dimer such as Shohei Ohtani lost track of $41 million in gambling losses by his valet. Ohtani had nothing to do with it. Just ask Manfred.

And now we’re to believe that the new, fiscally responsible owner of the Mets, on the precipice of signing Soto for more seasonal work money than he can possibly earn let alone deserve, coughed up a $1.8 billion fine for doing nothing wrong.

Could happen to any of us.

Failures of colleges deliver failures to NFL

Last week, a reader sent copies of recent “social” media missives sent by Michael Thomas, a former Saints wide receiver who matriculated through his junior year at Ohio State. Though available to the public, they were loaded with vulgarities, put-downs and grammar that would strain the minimal standards of admittance to grammar school.

If the NFL, NFLPA and NCAA placed here-and-now realities at the forefront as opposed to end-zone public relations slogans posed as social activism, it would take immediate measures to rid or at least treat abominable grammar — to the point of questioning literacy — and insane financial ruin — bejeweled conspicuous consumption — that leads to inevitable and lasting detriment players.

And the players who are functional illiterates and huge spenders on expensive, opulent garbage that loses value the moment of purchase, are almost all American college men who didn’t waste two minutes of their free time education.

Perhaps, due to weight room, practice and game time, there simply wasn’t enough time for academics at their institutions for higher learning.

And with “college” football now no more than legalized, highest-bidder professionalism, the desire to depart college with an education has become strictly accidental, thus the ability to hold a meaningful job, pay taxes and support a family after football has become a worsened matter of chance, as in fat chance.

So what’s the plan for football-recruited and football-reliant young men? Continue to use them, flush them, repeat?

The inability and unwillingness among Division I colleges to educate its football and basketball recruits — mostly African-Americans — is scandalous by institutionalized design and the pursuit of millions in money, primarily TV money.

The stars of this weekend’s games become the Where Are They Now? dime-a-dozen social washouts who planned to star in the NFL until an absence of skill, luck or a knee injury returns them to the blight from which they were recruited.

While legit college students in their mid-20s begin to succeed, their arrows pointed straight up, too many college football and basketball recruits’ futures, at 25, are in the past.

Roger Goodell’s end zones declare “Stop Racism” while he annually invites N-word-spewing, women-degrading rappers to perform as the headline performers before the nation’s largest audience.

As for the states’ attorneys general and governors who should be demanding oath-preceded testimonies of college presidents to explain why they’ve allowed their institutions of higher learning to serve as fronts for basketball and football teams, well, many have midcourt and 50-yard line seats, plus access to suites should the weather turn bad or their bourbon need ice.

Advertise vandalism? Hooray!

Why must everything point backward? A commercial for Total Wireless that appeared within NFL telecasts last Sunday starred a young man spray-painting the brick walls in an urban neighborhood, ostensibly to carry the product’s commercial message.

But whom did this ad target?

That’s right! Hooray for vandalism! Wonder if Total Wireless execs and ad reps would enjoy returning from work to see their homes defaced by spray paint.

Reader John Mike McCarthy notes that under Rick Pitino, St. John’s has mostly abandoned the recruitment of NYC area players in favor of those from — this season — Texas, Georgia, Florida, California, Ghana, Nigeria, Greece, South Sudan and Portugal.

The starting backcourt are college transients, one playing for his third college the other for his fourth.

Just three players on SJU’s roster are locals.

On Tuesday, Election Day, the winner of the 12th at Ohio’s Dayton harness track was “Trump’s Wall.” It paid $5.00.

No word as to whether Dayton provided grief counseling.